A Third National Language

Imprudens Scottorum gens, rerum suarum obliviscens.

We hear a lot in Ireland about the first and second national languages especially, it has to be said, about the first of these and its state of health. While the debate over the Irish smoulders on always, occasionally bursting forth into something warmer (especially on the letters page of the Irish Times), it's worth giving some attention to what could justly be described as out third national language, one which was used for every sort of expression by Irishmen for over a millennium. I mean, of course, Latin; the language of Cicero and Virgil is also the language of Saint Patrick and John Scottus and the vehicle whereby men from a remote island on the fringe of the continent were able to take their place at the centre of European thought and letters. The five hundred years following the introduction of Christianity were among the most dynamic and interesting in Irish history. This part of our heritage tends to receive, perhaps, less attention than its historical importance, not to mention its literary quality, deserves. Our popular conception of the subject is probably confined to vague notions of a Golden Age, of itinerant monks, the Book of Kells and Pangur Bán. One reason for this is the undoubted difficulty and inaccessibility of much of this material, often hidden away in expensive, hard-to-find editions and rarely discussed outside the pages of academic journals (although the books in the wonderful Scriptores Latini Hiberniae series published by the Institute for Advanced Studies are reasonably priced and sit, for the most part undisturbed, on a quiet shelf in Hodges Figgis). None the less, for those that take the trouble, this out of the way corner of Irish history and literature can yield up some real treasures, from the obscure grandeur of Columba's Altus Prosator to the lyrical evocations of Ireland by Colman and Donatus of Fiesole, from the slightly deranged erudition of the Hisperica Famina to the startling originality and learning of John Scottus. While it's true that debates over the date of Easter, however passionately argued (and they could be very passionately argued), or hagiographies of little-known saints may not fascinate the general reader the way they once did, the witty and humane poems of Sedulius Scottus or Adomnan's vivid, engaging life of Columba are among the gems of Irish literature of any period.

Literary Latin came to Ireland along with Christianity in the fifth century. As Dáíbhí Ó Crónín points out in his excellent chapter on this subject in the New History of Ireland, this presented a number of challenges to any would-be scholar. Latin was utterly foreign to the Irish and the techniques we take for granted for learning a language from scratch were almost entirely non-existent at that time. The languages spoken in Gaul or Spain in the sixth century were forms of Latin and for such a person, acquiring classical or ecclesiastical Latin was, to a greater or lesser extent, an exercise in polishing or tidying up what he already knew. For an Irishman, this was emphatically not the case (nominative, accusative or any other). Ancient grammars were not written with beginners in mind and the works of Donatus and others had to be simplified condensed for the schools. Paradigms of declensions and conjugations, vocabulary lists, rules of syntax, all the mechanics whereby almost a millennium and a half of schoolchildren were taught their Latin, owe much to the labours of the monks and their students in sixth and seventh century Ireland. The extent of their success can be seen in the efflorescence of writing, across a number of genres, from the late sixth century onwards.

Perhaps the first Irishman to gain a European reputation as a literary figure was Columbanus, famous as a letter-writer, poet, preacher, and composer of a formidably ascetic set of rules for his monks. Scholarship has in recent years nibbled away at the Columban corpus, questioning the attribution of much that was once though to be by him. Nevertheless, what remains fully bears witness to his wide reading, his facility with language, and to the excellence of the schools that could produce such a figure (Columbanus himself was in no doubt about the reputation and ability of Irish Scholarship - Epistle I. 4). Columbanus' reputation for eloquence was well deserved, added to a charismatic personality was a strong, forceful Latin style. He was certainly no respecter of persons; kings and popes (including Gregory the Great) felt the brunt of his sarcasm in a series of letters.

About two centuries after Columbanus, another one of his compatriots also made a reputation for himself on the continent. Sedulius Scottus was one of a number of Irishmen who found employment at the court of Charlemange and his successors in the course of the ninth century. Sedulius was just the sort of person that a Carolingian monarch or prelate was interested in; an accomplished scholar, widely read in pagan and Christian literature, with a facility for turning out polished Latin verses in praise of his patrons (Sedulius referred to himself as 'another Orpheus'). Sedulius was employed by Bishop Hartgar of Liège (his contemporaries Dicuil the Geographer and the philosopher John Scottus found similar employment elsewhere in the Frankish domains). Sedulius and his circle of fellow Irishmen at Liège produced copies of and commentaries upon a wide range of texts. Sedulius himself wrote a handbook on government in a medley of prose and verse, dedicated to King Lothair II. However, it is his poetry which makes Sedulius such an attractive figure. Some of the poems fairly crackle with a cheeky wit, asking Hartgar to replenish his supplies of beer or to provide him with better accommodation (John Scottus wrote a similar poem). These six lines with their combination of pagan and Christian learning, their self-deprecating humour, and their piety, are a good example of his output:

Aut lego vel scribo, doceo scrutorve sophiam:
obsecro celsithronum nocte dieque meum.
Vescor, poto libens, rithmizans invoco Musas,
dormisco stertens: oro deum vigilans.
Conscia mens scelerum deflet peccamina vitae;
parcite vos misero, Christe Maria, viro.

I read or write, or teach or search for wisdom,
I call upon the heavenly throne by night and by day
I eat, drink freely, rhyming I invoke the Muses,
I sleep snoring, and pray to God while awake.
A mind that knows its crimes bemoans the sins of life.
Have mercy, Christ and Mary, on a poor man.

Columbanus and Sedulius are but two of figures that make up our Hiberno-Latin heritage. However, this heritage largely lies neglected today. Of course the small number of people with a knowledge of this literature is directly related to the decline of Latin and the Classics generally in our schools and Universities. However I think that it is part of a wider lack of interest on the part of the Irish for vast swathes of their heritage. This is of course most noticeable in the actions of those in positions of power. From thedemolition of Georgian houses on Fitzwilliam Street to the building of theM3 Motorway through the landscape of Tara, Irish governments have repeatedly showed themselves to be utterly unwilling to take responsibility for the physical remnants of their country's past. Our intellectual and cultural inheritance has fared little better at their hands. The most recent example is the decision to merge the NationalLibrary, National Archives, and the Irish Manuscripts Commission in an attempt to save money (though where the savings are to come from, as all three institutions are underfunded at the moment, is anyone's guess).

Nor is the situation much better in the Universities, as the decision not to fill the Chair of Old Irish at UCD and a series of similar vacancies across the third level institutions shows. A German academic in Alexander McCall Smith's satire Portuguese Irregular Verbs says dismissively: 'Nobody in Ireland knows anything about Early Irish. This is a well-established fact.' That statement becomes less and less of an exaggeration each year. Latin and Greek However, this neglect for broad swathes of Ireland's heritage it is also noticible, I think, in the general public. The abolition of the Old Irish post made no impression outside of the academic community and even the attempts to defend the landscape around Tara seemed to me to attract less popular support than might have been expected. It is not just Government and Semi-State bodies which preside over the destruction of historical buildings and sites, each year, up and down the country, ancient earthworks of all sorts are levelled by intensive farming or by development, historic buildings crumble neglected or are scarred by poorly funded, badly carried out restoration work. The scale of what has been lost in this, less dramatic, almost day-to-day process is truly astonishing, all the more so for it having happened in such a brief space of time. This unceasing attrition, which is slowly wiping bare our towns and countryside of all traces of their former occupants of what should be the common inheritance of everyone on our island, has attracted surprisingly little attention and will only increase in pace as long as this apathy continues. It is surely the responsibility of all of us, and not just our public bodies, to ensure that those things, physical and intellectual, which have survived the tumult of our history and which constitute our nation's heritage should be preserved and handed down, alongside whatever our own contributions may be, to those who come after us.